In most commercial high-speed printers, ribbon cartridges are consumable items discarded after use and replaced with fresh cartridges. To extend the life of the ribbon within the cartridge, various devices have been employed. For example, cartridges often contain re-inkers. Also, mobius loops are used to invert the ribbon (fabric) to utilize the maximum amount of surface area and both sides of the ribbon whereby use of available ink is optimized. However, even with these devices, such extended use cartridges still have only marginally extended useful lives. There are also a number of devices for shifting the ribbon on command upwardly or downwardly into alignment with the operative face of a printhead. These are principally used for multi-colored ribbons, for example, where two or more bands of different color inks are on the ribbon and it is desirable to print a selected color on the substrate. Shifters then shift the ribbon into alignment with the printhead so that the desired print color may be achieved on the substrate. Shifters may also be used to shift a one-color ribbon to extend the life of the ribbon by using a larger area of the fabric surface. The shifters are typically connected and driven by printer logic which controls the up-and-down motion of the ribbon while the printhead traverses horizontally. To applicant's knowledge, there has not previously been a printer cartridge mounted in the printer for oscillatory movement during printing by a mechanism carried by the cartridge itself whereby increased percentage of the area of the ribbon is actually used.